She was a queen in her own right, bringing an innovative spirit to her music, which captured the imagination regardless of the genre: guaracha, bomba, son, or bolero. Only her presence was needed to revolutionize the music scene. She used her trademark “ahí namá” and “ay yi yi yi” to dominate any song she tackled with the intense, irreverent, effortless air that characterized each and every one of her recordings.

She had achieved a certain unexpected fame in her native Cuba, where she was considered a revolutionary for her vocal style. Upon her arrival to the United States, she embarked on a new and equally consecrating stage of her career, one that would take on a new dimension alongside Maestro Tito Puente, with whom she would record four albums.

Even after her tragic death, La Lupe was honored by the Spanish film society –in particular Pedro Almodóvar, one of the country’s most famous directors, who included her song “Puro teatro” in his movie “Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios.” The song was, and is, one of the most vibrant and representative of her discography.

Some say La Lupe was the artist who knew the greatest success. She also drank the deepest from the cup of tragedy and misfortune, but none of this took anything away from her reputation of being an unparalleled, personable artist.

“I think people like me,” the legendary La Lupe, one of the most electrifyingly memorable performers to ever blitz Planet Earth, once said in an interview, “because I do what they’d like to, but can’t get free enough to do.” True, some would say La Yi Yi Yi was free spirit incarnate; others would say she was simply possessed. Literally. No surprise, given the voluptuous vocalist’s onstage inclination to bounce off walls, rip her clothes off, throw shoes at her band, and claw, bite, and scratch herself, all the while belting a tune with orgasmic zest. Such musical drama reportedly drew international celebs like Marlon Brando, Ernest Hemingway, Simone De Beauvoir, and Jean Paul Sartre into her court. But it was also such anything-can-happen antics, along with new leader Castro’s bent on nationalizing and cleaning up Havana’s infamous nightclub scene, that eventually landed La Lupe in New York City where, from 1962 until her untimely death thirty years later, she would experience the ultimate highs and lows of life in a business that would crown her the Queen of Latin Soul yet watch idly as she died a pauper’s death. La Lupe was born Guadalupe Victoria Yoli Raymond in San Pedrito, a town in the southern part of Cuba near Santiago de Cuba. (There seems to be an agreement about the day of La Lupe’s birth: December 23. However, the actual year of her birth appears to be up for debate. Most sources say either 1936 or 1939. Archival footage from La Lupe’s funeral shows 1936 as the date given on her casket, while La Lupe’s tombstone at St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx gives her birth year as 1939.) So rural was her hometown that she later remarked, “I was born in such a small town, nobody knew about it until I left.” Though attracted to music at an early age, Lupe’s parents encouraged their daughter to pursue a more stable profession—that of a schoolteacher—and though she followed their wishes, she couldn’t resist her passion for music, particularly after the family moved to Havana when La Lupe was a teenager. A melting pot of Eartha Kitt, Edith Piaf, Olga Guillot, and Nina Simone, the singer’s tempestuously elastic voice could both coddle and torch any genre. Whether interpreting boleros or son montunos, pop schlock or rock-and-roll ditties, jazz standards or Broadway show tunes, La Lupe simply couldn’t contain the music within herself. And no one—be it Mongo Santamaria, Tito Puente, Dick Cavett, or the Fania All-Stars—could ever, no matter how hard they tried, contain her. “I’ll never forget the first time I met La Lupe,” says Harlemite Henry “Pucho” Brown, himself the crowned Latin Soul Brother and founding bandleader of Pucho and his Latin Soul Brothers. “I went to visit Marty Sheller, who was the musical arranger for Mongo at the time. He was living on 86th Street and Broadway, in a building where there were a bunch of musicians. I walk in, and there’s this broad laying on the couch, all dirty feet and not lookin’ like much—and it was Lupe. This was around 1962. Then the next thing I know, she’s a big star! When I saw her perform at the Apollo with Mongo, she was great—a little wacky, but she was great, with a lot of fire! And she liked that voodoo s***.” That “voodoo s***” was actually Santeria, and for much of her life, La Lupe was indeed known to be a Santera. Some folks thought that her religious practice could be heard throughout the dozens of LPs she would eventually make, beginning with her first full-length effort you hold here—Con el Diablo en el Cuerpo (“With the Devil in the Body”). Recorded April 1960 in Havana, likely at Radio Progreso, and released for the RCA affiliate Discuba Records the following year, the then twentyyear- old (or twenty-three) wunderkind follows the musical blueprint she’d stick to throughout her Spanglish-ized singing career, mashing extravagantly arranged pop standards with raw indigenous jams. Con el Diablo en el Cuerpo was presumably named after the ecstatic Julio Gutierrez–penned title track and not (necessarily) after La Lupe’s own penchant for onstage “possession.” However, a purchasing public couldn’t be faulted if, after taking one look at the album’s front and back images of a woman clearly transfixed, they thought perhaps the Devil lurked somewhere within the vinyl’s grooves. Maybe it was the type of controversy Discuba’s record execs were seeking at the time. Regardless, from the get-go, La Lupe turns each song into a full-fledged drama, wringing histrionic heartache even from white-bread teen superstar Paul Anka’s two included numbers, “Crazy Love” and “So It’s Goodbye.” Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have a top-notch orchestra backing you, and La Lupe has just that, alternately led and arranged by pianist Felipe Dulzaides and multi-instrumentalist/studio veteran Eddie Gaytan, whose musicians La Lupe teasingly encourages during their choruses and solos with shouts of “¡Qué lindo!” and “¡Háblale, háblale!” Moreover, La Lupe raises the already high bar on the Eddie Cooley/Otis Blackwell standard “Fiebre” (“Fever”), a ubiquitous tune she would obliterate again later in the decade for Tico Records. We’ll probably never know whether La Lupe thought Con el Diablo en el Cuerpo was going to be the beginning of a long recording career in Cuba, but the fact is, after her follow-up Discuba release La Lupe Is Back, she’d never make another record in her native country. Soon after the sophomore release, she’d find herself in New York City, dominating the ’60s like no other female Latin singer, packing venues from the Palladium to Carnegie Hall, well on her way to becoming a controversial icon, even after being supplanted by her compatriot, the soon-to-be-crowned Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz. “In Cuba, they called me crazy,” La Lupe would later say. “They didn’t understand me.” The Bronx—where today you’ll find La Lupe Way—eventually did. La Lupe did indeed become a teacher, one of music and drama. Con el Diablo en el Cuerpo is the first lesson.

The most controversial singer in the history of Latin music was undoubtedly Lupe Victoria Yolí Raymond, better known by her stage name: La Lupe. The Santiago de Compostela native, possessed of a vibrant and powerful voice –not to mention a sensuality that exceeded her diminutive form– won the affection of the Spanish-speaking population, who voted her “The Queen of Latin Music” in 1967.

On this album, La Lupe performs one of her greatest hits, ‘Puro Teatro,’ written by the great Puerto Rican composer emblematic of La Fania: Catalino Curet Alonso, known to all by his nickname, “Tite.” ‘Puro Teatro’ is one of the most successful pieces in the history of Afro-Cuban and Afro-Puerto Rican music.

In addition, the well loved singer performs three of the 18 songs she wrote during her career: “The Queen,” the guajira number “Me Siento Guajira,” and the Bembe piece “Guaguancó Bembé.”

During those times, La Lupe was deep in the throes of adopting Santeria, the Yoruba religion that constituted an integral part of her life and the driving force behind her actions for the majority of her life in the United States. The album cover shows her dressed in white, with her head covered, in keeping with the early practices of this religious tradition.

La Lupe closes the album with the Bembe number “Guanguancó Bembé,” a song in which she pays homage to African deities and a custom she adopted during her days with Tito Puente and carried with her throughout her albums for many years.

In addition to their musical function, these Bembe numbers played a spiritual role. Although they were never popular on the radio or with the singer’s average fan, these songs were a testament to La Lupe’s spirituality, and a way of giving thanks to the saints. Clearly, she sought the blessing of these spiritual entities, and waited for news of the album’s success with her fans.

A series of songs –including the popular “Sueño” by Gabriel Ruíz, “Último Adiós” by Rubén Estéfano, and “A la orilla del Mar” by Esperón y Cortázar– take the album to the next level, and showcase the interpretive talent of the remarkable diva. Her mastery of a wide variety of rhythms within Afro-Cuban and Afro-Puerto Rican musical traditions is proof of the red-hot Cuban rhythm that separates her from the rest: a mastery that earned her the affection of millions of fans around the world.

La Lupe has remained an enigma in the minds of the fans who supported her during her momentous and tumultuous career. During the research for my book, entitled, “Demitificación de un diva; La Verdad sobre La Lupe,” I discovered that many of the stories attached to the legend of the extraordinary diva were based on myth generated by the Puerto Rican folklore surrounding her. Many of the innuendos floating throughout her story were the result of a blurred view of the extraordinary talent she exhibited. I found that beyond the virtual insanity that defined her work and her life lay a valiant, dedicated, and spiritual woman who cared only about her religion, her career, and the acceptance of her fans.

This album provides a clear example of the interpretive ability of the well loved artist, who, despite having abandoned the artistic world at the age of 50, left immortalized in her recordings an indisputable message of love and romance that define a unique talent.

The collection also reveals that La Lupe had all the talent in the world, and that she was an artist who could hold her own without the musical support of the maestro, Tito Puente.

Those who followed Lupe Yolí’s career certainly enjoyed her exceptional style and her excellent, unique way of imprinting her Cuban filin onto her bolero numbers. Anybody who did not live through that time has in this album the opportunity to experience the emotion of one of the greatest singers who mounted the tarima in the face of Latin music’s voracious appetite.

This is La Lupe at her finest; this is La Lupe in action. This is the only true queen of Latin music, singing to fans who span generations. It is an extraordinary album that will live now and forever in generations past, present, and future.